Sunday, 5 March 2017

I posted a couple
of tweets yesterday giving my personal view of things to avoid when writing a
job application. These generated a livelier debate than I had anticipated, and
made me think further about the issues I'd raised. I've previously blogged
about getting a job as a research assistant
in psychology; this piece is
directed more at early career researchers aiming for a postdoc or first
lectureship. I'll do a separate post about issues raised by my second
tweet – inclusion of more personal information in your application. Here
I'll
focus on this one:

Protip for job
applicants: 3+ 1st author 'in prep' papers suggests you can't finish things AND
that you'll be distracted if appointed

I've been
shortlisting for years, and there has been a noticeable trend for publication
lists to expand to include papers that are 'in preparation' as well as those
that are 'submitted' or 'under review'. One obvious problem with these is that
it's unclear what they refer to: they could be nearly-completed manuscripts or a set of
bullet points. My tweet was making the
further point that you need to think of the impression you create in the reader
if you have five or six papers 'in preparation', especially if you are first
author. My guess is that most applicants think that this will indicate their
activity and productivity, but that isn't so.
I'd wonder whether this is someone who starts things and then can't finish
them. I'd also worry that if I took the applicant on, the 'in preparation' papers would
come with them and distract them from the job I had employed them to do. I've blogged before about the curse of the
'academic backlog':
While I am sympathetic about supporting early researchers in getting
their previous work written up, I'd be wary of taking on someone who had
already
accumulated a large backlog right at the start of their career.

Many people who
commented on this tweet supported my views:

@MdStockbridge We've been advised never to list in prep articles unless
explicitly asked in the context of post doc applications?. We were told it
makes one looks desperate to "fill the space."

@hardsci I usually ignore "in prep" sections, but to me
more than 1-2 items look like obvious vita-padding

@larsjuhljensen "In prep" does not count when I read a CV. The
slight plus of having done something is offset by inability to prioritize
content.

@janhove 'Submitted' is all right, I think, if turn arounds in your field
are glacial. But 'in prep' is highly non-committal.

Others, though,
felt this was unfair, because it meant that applicants couldn't refer to work
that may be held up by forces beyond their control:

@david_colquhoun that one seems quite unfair -timing is often beyond ones's
control

@markwarschauer I disagree completely. The more active job applicants are in
research & publishing the better.

@godze786 if it's a junior applicant it may also mean
other authors are holding up. Less power when junior

@tremodian All good except most often fully drafted papers are stuck in
senior author hell and repeated prods to release them often do nothing.

But then, this
very useful suggestion came up:

@DrBrocktagon But do get it out as preprint and put *that* on CV

@maxcoltheart Yes. Never include "in prep" papers on cv/jobapp. Or
"submitted" papers? Don't count since they may never appear? Maybe OK
if ARKIVed

The point here is
that if you deposit your manuscript as a preprint, then it is available for
people to read. It is not, of course peer-reviewed, but for a postdoc position,
I'd be less interested in counting peer-reviewed papers than in having the
opportunity to evaluate the written work of the applicant. Preprints allow one
to do that. And it can be effective:

@BoyleLab we just did a search and one of our candidates did this. It helped
them get an interview because it was a great paper

But, of course,
there's a sting in the tail: once something is a preprint it will be read by
others, including your shortlisting committee, so it had better be as good as
you can get it. So the question came up, at what point would you deposit
something as a preprint? I put out this question, and Twitter came back with
lots of advice:

@michaelhoffman Preprint ≠
"in prep". But a smart applicant should preprint any of their
"submitted" manuscripts.?

@DoctorZen The term "pre-print" itself suggests an answer.
Pre-prints started life as accepted manuscripts. They should not be rough
drafts.

@serjepedia these become part of your work record. Shoddiness could be
damaging.

@m_wall I wouldn't put anything up that hadn't been edited/commented by all
authors, so basically ready to submit.

@restokin If people are reading it to decide if they should give you a job,
it would have to be pretty solid.

All in all, I
thought this was a productive discussion. It was clear that many senior
academics disregard lists of research outputs that are not in the public
domain. Attempts to pad out the CV are counterproductive and create a negative
impression. But if work is written up to a point where it can be (or has been)
submitted, there's a clear advantage to the researcher in posting it as a
preprint, which makes it accessible. It doesn't guarantee that a selection
committee will look at it, but it at least gives them that opportunity.